Telephone directory assistance services have been available for the past century. While improvements have been made over the decades, such systems are still poorly suited for many users including, for example, subscribers of mobile telephone services (cellular, personal communications services (“PCS”) and other wireless services).
In prior art directory assistance services, a customer dials an operator and identifies the name and address of a party whose telephone number is desired. The operator then locates the number, using printed directories or a computer database, and provides the number to the customer. (The provision of the number is sometimes done by a human operator, but more typically is done with a synthesized voice response unit that provides an automated voicing of the number.) After the customer's inquiry has been satisfied, the connection to the operator is terminated.
While satisfactory for most customers, this arrangement is ill-suited for many mobile telephone customers. For one, such customers are usually away from their general work environments (e.g., in a vehicle), and thus may not have ready access to a pencil and paper in order to make a note of the desired number. (Even if such materials are available, the customer may not find it convenient to interrupt other activities, e.g., driving, in order to make a note.) In addition, the process of initiating a second call—to the desired party—entails further manual operations (e.g., hanging up, waiting for another dial tone, and dialing) which may be a hindrance to the customer's other activities.
The present assignee has redressed many of the difficulties associated with providing directory assistance and related services to subscribers of mobile telephone services. For example, it has provided a directory assistance service that eliminates the need to make a note of the desired number, or undertake a redialing exercise. Instead, after determining the telephone number desired by the customer, the directory assistance operator proceeds to initiate a call to the desired party, and connects the new outgoing call to the original customer. This arrangement obviates the need for the customer to make a note of the voiced number, or to undertake a redialing exercise. However, the number can still be voiced to the customer if desired.
Rather than dropping all further involvement with the call, as is typically done with most directory assistance systems, the assignee's directory assistance system continually monitors the connection thereby established for a predetermined command (e.g. a DTMF signal) issued by the customer. For example, the customer may issue a command by pressing the “*” button. If such a command is detected, the customer is transferred to a directory assistance operator, who can then provide whatever further assistance is needed. By this arrangement, the press of a single button by the customer summons further directory assistance, rather than the redialing procedure normally required. One example of such a feature is the assignee's Starback® feature. In addition to (or alternatively to) returning the customer to an operator upon detection of a customer command, the customer can be automatically returned to an operator upon detection of a busy signal, a ring-no-answer condition, a call termination condition or other status condition. One example of such a feature is the assignee's Autoback® feature. Both the return on command and the automatic return are examples of “return to operator” features.
Information assistance services are also very limited with respect to the types of information, connectivity and access that can be provided. For example, as ubiquitous as mobile telephones have become, information assistance services still cannot provide mobile telephone directory assistance, much less directory assistance with respect to other frequently used technologies such as e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging. Moreover, even with respect to traditional landline telephone numbers, commercial directory listing services offer only two classes of residential listings—“listed,” which means everyone can have access to the listing all the time, and “unlisted,” which means no one can ever have access to the listing.
There are a number of obstacles which confront prospective mobile directory assistance service providers. For example, today, each wireless carrier is responsible for assigning wireless telephone numbers to its subscribers. Therefore, in order to provide a commercially viable wireless directory assistance system, all of the major wireless carriers would have to supply its listings to the service. If a substantial carrier such as Verizon Wireless refused to provide its listings, customers of the wireless directory assistance service would find that an inordinately large number of their calls to the service would not yield the desired number and/or connection. It is unlikely that such a service would stay in business very long. Of course, each wireless carrier can provide a service with its own listings, but this would require customers to know in advance which service provider the person they are trying to reach uses—also a commercially unrealistic requirement.
One reason some wireless service providers refuse to make their numbers available for directory listings is the widespread fear among wireless telephone subscribers that they will be subject to frequent unwelcome interruptions. Unlike landline telephones, wireless telephones are carried everywhere (e.g., to business meetings, ball games, restaurants etc.), increasing the risk of inopportune interruptions by unwelcome callers. Even in the absence of a wireless directory assistance system, this fear has led some consumers to conclude that they actually need two different wireless telephones; one with a freely disseminated number for business, and another telephone for personal use with a number to be given out only to close friends.
A further obstacle to consumer acceptance of a wireless directory assistance solution modeled on traditional landline directory assistance is presented by the fact that, unlike the caller-pays billing model employed by landline telephone services, wireless telephone subscribers are charged for connect time for both incoming and outgoing calls. Therefore, wireless service subscribers who choose to list their phone numbers would be charged for incoming calls they did not want.
Information assistance services have also largely failed to accommodate non-telephone forms of communication, such as e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, direct connect services (such as that currently offered by Nextel) etc. Traditional directory assistance services, for example, have almost completely ignored these forms of communication. While Internet services such as Yahoo.com and Switchboard.com do offer e-mail search services, it is our experience that such services rarely produce the desired e-mail listings. These services rely in large part on voluntary user registrations and searches of public online records. The online records searched rarely contain the desired listings, and very few users register their e-mail addresses with such services, at least in part because they fear receiving even more unwanted e-mails (including spam; attachments containing viruses etc.) than they already do.
A service called Trekmail (see www.trekmail.com) has been developed in which a person who knows someone else's e-mail address is able to send an e-mail, containing a voice message, to that other person using the e-mail system. The caller sets up a profile with Trekmail, including the caller's name, an account number (user ID), a password or personal identification number (PIN), and a “signature” with which to sign the message. In order to use the service, the caller calls a central Trekmail telephone number (or voice message server) and identifies him- or herself using the account number and password. The Trekmail server, using an interactive voice response (IVR) unit, requests from the caller the e-mail address of the person (the recipient) to whom the caller would like to send a message. The caller then records the message using the telephone, the Trekmail server converts the message to a sound file, attaches the sound file to the e-mail message and sends the e-mail message to the recipient. The e-mail message appears in the recipient's e-mailbox with the caller's return e-mail address and the caller's “signature.” In order to hear the message, the recipient opens the e-mail message and the attached sound file.
As noted, however, the Trekmail service requires that the sender already know the e-mail address of the recipient (although recently a capability was added whereby the sender may select an e-mail recipient from a contacts list, the e-mail addresses of all the contacts on the contact list must still be provided by the sender). Another problem with the Trekmail-type messaging system is the difficulty that the IVR has in recognizing the recipient's e-mail address. E-mail addresses come in many forms, and there are many different ways of verbalizing the addresses. For instance, the typical e-mail address “smith@business.com” includes the recipient's name (“smith”), followed by an “at” sign (“@”), followed by the domain name (“business”), a period, and an extension (“.com”). The sender likely pronounces the address, “smith at business dot corn”, and the IVR may be able to recognize it. However, many e-mail addresses differ from this typical address. The recipient's name may include a first initial, e.g., “jsmith,” or a first name, e.g., “jaysmith,” or may include other punctuation to set off the first name from the last name, e.g., “j.smith,” “jay.smith,” or “j_smith.” When the caller speaks this part of the e-mail address, the IVR cannot distinguish between “jsmith” and “jaysmith,” or “j dot smith” and “jay dot smith.” The IVR may also encounter confusion if some callers say “jay dot smith” and others say “jay period smith.” Similarly confusing words can occur with the domain name, especially since many e-mail addresses have more than one extension, e.g., @business.co.au. The IVR may also have trouble interpreting the words that the speakers say, either because the speakers do not speak clearly or because of the accent or speed with which the address is spoken. Some people may speak the e-mail address using words, and others may spell the whole address out, and others may combine the two methods. In addition, because many parts of e-mail addresses are names and may actually be two or more words concatenated into one, it is difficult to match words using a standard dictionary.
What is needed is an information assistance service that supports directory assistance and connectivity for landline telephones and/or wireless telephones and/or e-mail and/or instant messaging and/or text messaging and/or direct connect services and/or any other communication technologies having connection points expressible as addresses, in such a way that the desired parties can control the information and access afforded to callers and other users who try to reach them.